PETA's Compassionate Citizen material

Compassionate Citizen Humane-Education Programme
For today's young people, developing compassion for animals can be a key step towards developing compassion for – and rejecting violence against – all beings, including humans and developing respect for the environment. It is important, therefore, that students learn that the animals with whom we share this planet are, in many ways, not so different from us.

Compassionate Citizen is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India's version of PETA US' internationally recognized humane-education programme, Share the World, which is designed to help students better understand and appreciate animals. Compassionate Citizen is appropriate for students ages 8 to 12 years but has also been successfully used for other age groups and can be used in language arts, science, social studies, environmental and value education curricula.

Compassionate Citizen has been praised by numerous celebrities, including Lara Dutta, Raveena Tandon Thadani, Anupam Kher and Jackie Shroff as well as by educators and environmentalist Dr RK Pachauri, director general of the prestigious The Energy and Resources Institute.

The pack includes a guide for teachers as well as reproducible worksheets and a 28 minute video. Although designed to be included in the monthly curriculum, the programme can also be used for a shorter period of time, including a one-day workshop.